In our June 28 Market Yourself; we talked about your management skills possibly affecting your marketability. Time management is one of the needed requirements to keeping yourself and your business on track and at its best. Here are a few of our favorite tools to assist you in the sometimes overwhelming task of organization.

Toggl

An online time tracking tool featuring 1-click time tracking and allows you to see exactly where your time is going. They offer a free version and an upgraded version with more specific features and more detailed management applications.Toggl is a timesheet killer.

The Toggl free plan provides an easy way to track time spent on projects. Toggl works well for both teams and freelancers. It is Internet based, so you can start using it in less than a minute. Toggl has desktop widgets, an iPhone application and an iGoogle gadget for even faster access. You can use all the basic time tracking and reporting features for free. There are no limits on the amount of projects. You can have a maximum of five team members with the free plan.

The Pro plans offer additional features that make Toggl more practical for the business user: hourly rates, professional-looking reports with your logo, time rounding, etc.

Launchy

Launchy is a cross-platform utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager.
Launchy indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes!
This program is offered free to all users. Developed by a college student, he invites you to make a donation based on your satisfaction with the product.

Google Calendar

All features of Google calendar are free to use. The calendar makes it easy for you to share your schedule with others, have access to your calendar while on the go, send invitations and track RSVPs, and allows you to sync with your desktop applications and work offline. Having all your deadlines, meetings, phone calls etc all in one easy to read place will streamline your productivity and impress your clients with your punctuality and professionalism.

Rescue time

Rescue time is an analytical tool that tracks your online travels. You may be surprised to discover that all those “quick little visits” to your personal social networking sites eat up 27% of your working day.(Not actual data, I chose that number for dramatic purposes).  With rescue time, you can see the data and adjust your working habits if necessary and also maybe impose a little self discipline, if necessary of course.
A free version is offered, but as said by the developers, “free forever, but kind of wimpy.” Your best bet would be to sign up for the SoloPro for Six to Nine dollars a month and get the full benefit of the program.

Mind 42

Mind 42 uses the application of Mind mapping as the basis of their helpful tool. Mind mapping is about collecting ideas arranged in a tree like diagram. From a programmer’s point of view, the creation of such diagrams requires graphical processing. As web browsers weren’t able to do graphical processing for a long time, such applications only existed as classical desktop applications which had to be installed. But times have changed, computers got faster and browsers became more powerful. Mind42 is one of the first solutions for mind mapping which is a pure web application – with all its advantages. No installation required – accessible everywhere! And free to all users!

Mind42 is a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) mind map editor supporting keyboard shortcuts, drag and drop, zooming and much more. No forms and lists which are generally used in web application. A real application – within your browser.
Being a web application, mind42 enables another interesting feature realizable on the web: collaboration. Brainstorming is no single user activity – the more people take part in a brainstorming session, the better the results will be. When using mind42, every participant of a brainstorming session has an immediately updated view onto all the already collected ideas.

So check out these handy dandy helpers to bring some organization and ease to the wonderful world of freelancing.

photo credit: conskeptical